iSo THE DARWINIAN THEORY 



clue to problems of extraordinary and widely spread 

 interest. On the other hand, the support this theory 

 receives through being able to offer a ready and 

 complete explanation of so many and such divers 

 facts is very great indeed, and becomes all the more 

 significant when we reflect that the facts themselves 

 only came to light, or received serious attention, 

 some time after the promulgation of the theory. 



The conclusion we have arrived at is, that the 

 colours of animals and plants are no mere accidents, 

 and are not created for our special benefit, but are 

 directly useful to their possessors, and have been 

 acquired because they are useful. Were any addi- 

 tional argument necessary, it would be easy to find 

 it in the fact that men are so far from being in 

 agreement as to what is and what is not beautiful, 

 that the ideal of one nation may be the horror of 

 another ; that a picture which an Art Committee 

 may select as beautiful, may appear to the public, for 

 whom it is purchased, as entirely destitute of beauty ; 

 that the various devices which savage races practise 

 in order to render themselves, as they consider 

 beautiful, appear disfigurements to other nations. 



So then it appears, on the one hand, that not only 

 is there no general agreement among mankind as to 

 what is beautiful, but that different nations, or the 

 same nation at different times, absolutely contradict 

 each other. Some other explanation is necessary of 

 the beautiful colours of animals and plants, and we 

 see what that explanation is in the great law of Utility, 

 expounded by the doctrine of Evolution, for the full 

 enunciation of which we are indebted to Darwin. 



